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Post 9/11 Poetry
=9/11 Poetry Aftermath = = September 11th, 2001 is a day that many Americans will never forget. On this date, we experienced a devastating national tragedy. The twin towers, a national landmark, was struck by a group of extremists, who would shape the way brown skinned people were seen in the United States. In return, many brown skinned Americans were targeted and viewed in a negative light, a cause of which was the ignorance of many Americans. Several of these people, afraid of what they did not know, turned to violence as a response towards brown skinned individuals. Public humiliation, attacks, and other forms of discrimination were aimed towards these brown skinned individuals in the U.S. post September 11, 2001. The hate crimes that were directed towards Arabs, Indians, and Sikhs in the U.S. are innumerable and continue today. As a response, many brown skinned Americans used poetry as a way of expressing themselves. They expressed their anger, humiliation, and confusion about the way that they were being treated in the United States. For them, poetry now became the outlet to educate and bring understanding to those who knew nothing about them. = Significance Highlighting this issue will be vital to those who are unaware of the hate crimes and negative response that many in the U.S. had towards brown skinned people, particularly Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, and Indians. Showcasing some of their poetry and their intent for writing it will cause many to gain a greater understanding and appreciation for this subject. We are often exposed to only specific genres in poetry, but there are many out there that should also be studied. Poets, such as Amiri Baraka and Suheir Hammad, truly use their talent to allow for us to experience and understand the Muslim-American experience; however, others, like Nina Singh and Matthew Abuelo, simply allow for us to see how being brown skinned in America post 9/11 is a dangerous thing to be. Category:9/11 Category:Poetry Category:Xenophobia Category:Islam Category:Muslim Category:Sikh Category:Indian Love & Hate: A 9.11 Cocktail by Nina Chanpreet Singh I hate my love handles You hijack a plane A suicide murder Balbir Singh Sodhi shot in the back of the head A 5 year old boy with a patka punched in the face kicked to the ground crushed rib cage his Heart broken open What harvest will this yield future generations? Hate breeds hate from the same seed on American soil self hate/muslim hate/sikh hate What makes an act of terrorism any different from your news reporting profiling turbans with brown skin? from go back home? from you hating me, hating yourself, hating myself? If I fill my heart with love tell you I love you will that make you stop? Or will you only see brown skin long braid widow’s peak steel bracelet? What about Ik Onkar etched into my heart hair covering my body self acceptance? Go back home. Where is my home? Punjab, my mother America, my birth place already destroyed Ripped apart flames of hate bleeding rivers How do planes explode towers? How many times can you recite the mool mantr in a minute? How many seconds in a minute? How many people died at the count of death? How many people died that you forgot to count? How many unborn generations live inside of us, already dead?" (Singh 1). My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears by Mojha Kahf "My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer, wudu, because she has to pray in the store or miss the mandatory prayer time for Muslims She does it with great poise, balancing herself with one plump matronly arm against the automated hot-air hand dryer, after having removed her support knee-highs and laid them aside, folded in thirds, and given me her purse and her packages to hold so she can accomplish this august ritual and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown as they notice what my grandmother is doing, an affront to American porcelain, a contamination of American Standards by something foreign and unhygienic requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom My grandmother, though she speaks no English, catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says, I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul with water from the world's ancient irrigation systems I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus over painted bowls imported from China among the best families of Aleppo And if you Americans knew anything about civilization and cleanliness, you'd make wider washbins, anyway My grandmother knows one culture—the right one, as do these matrons of the Middle West. For them, my grandmother might as well have been squatting in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor, Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn't matter which, when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge. "You can't do that," one of the women protests, turning to me, "Tell her she can't do that." "We wash our feet five times a day," my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic. "My feet are cleaner than their sink. Worried about their sink, are they? I should worry about my feet!" My grandmother nudges me, "Go on, tell them." Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers, all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed, is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps that match her purse, I think in case someone from one of the best families of Aleppo should run into her—here, in front of the Kenmore display I smile at the midwestern women as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them and shrug at my grandmother as if they had just apologized through me No one is fooled, but I hold the door open for everyone and we all emerge on the sales floor and lose ourselves in the great common ground of housewares on markdown" (Kahf 1). Works Cited Baraka, Amiri. "Somebody Blew Up America." Youtube. Youtube, 16 Dec 2009. Web. 15 Nov 2014. Baraka, Amiri. 2012. Digital Image. Amiri Baraka Biography. Web. 21 Nov 2014. Hammad, Suheir. “First Writing Since.” Youtube. Youtube, 10 Oct 2014. Web. 22 Nov 2014. Kahf, Mohja. “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink at Sears.” About. About, n.d. Web 23 Oct. 2014. Kahf, Mohja. Digital image. National Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2014. Singh, Nina Chanpreet. “Love & Hate: A 9.11 Cocktail.” Sikhchic. Sikhchic, 11 Sept. 2011 Web 24 Oct. 2014.